CA: Oracle grand jury is stymied, Lockyer says

Justice stymied IS Justice denied.

Why doesn't Lockyer just escort the offending Davis people to a cell with Spike?

I mean, state-sanctioned homosexual rape was just fine in the case of Enron and Kenneth Lay, wasn't it? ;-)

Lockyer said the newspaper report made it impossible for his prosecutors to confront witnesses with an element of surprise.
....
... But for the story in The Sacramento Bee, we might have been able to prosecute them."

He said the story made it "hard to get the evidence that we would have had when they were confronted with the evidence in a surprising manner."

What a lame excuse to cover Lockyer's aversion to prosecuting the case.

"When they knew about it and could prepare for a week ahead of time, they did what people do, which is cover their tracks and prepare an explanation that wasn't very believable but made it harder to prosecute," he said.
....
Sources told The Bee that Lockyer's investigators believe a reference to Ellison was omitted from the calendar turned over to the committee, which was generated on May 3, 2002, the day after Lockyer's agents raided

Mr. Lockyer, they had nearly a year to prepare for the grand jury. Don't blame the Sacramento Bee for your inability to investigate anything.

The Bee reported in January that Justice Department officials believe the administration submitted to legislators an appointments calendar for Gov. Gray Davis' policy director, Kari Dohn, that had been doctored to omit a reference to Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison.

I searched FR for "oracle," but couldn't find the article. Here it is:

Obstruction suspected in Oracle probe
By Dan Smith -- Bee Deputy Capitol Bureau Chief
Published 2:15 a.m. PST Friday, January 17, 2003

Attorney General Bill Lockyer's rejuvenated probe of the state's ill-fated software deal with Oracle Corp. is focusing on obstruction of justice allegations against the Davis administration, sources said Thursday.
Specifically, Justice Department officials believe the administration submitted a calendar for Gov. Gray Davis' policy director, Kari Dohn, that had been doctored to omit a reference to Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison.
Neither Lockyer's office nor Davis press secretary Steve Maviglio would comment on the allegations. Dohn could not be reached for comment.
Lockyer has convened a grand jury in Sacramento to hear testimony beginning next week. State Sen. Dean Florez, who as an assemblyman led a legislative investigation into the matter last spring, has been subpoenaed as the first witness.
Allegations about the calendar, Florez said, raise questions about how truthful the administration's witnesses were during legislative hearings and suggest political influence from Ellison may have played a larger role in the contract's approval than Davis officials have been willing to admit.
"It is a question that has been wandering through my mind during these hearings," said Florez, D-Shafter. "I hope (the grand jurors) really look into it in a way the committee really couldn't. (Dohn) may have a lot more to say than all the 'I don't recalls' that she told the committee."
The $95 million deal to license all state employees to use Oracle's database software came under intense scrutiny after the state auditor criticized it as an unnecessary and costly purchase negotiated by top state officials ill-equipped for the task. Davis fired four top appointees as details of the transaction became public. The deal was ultimately rescinded.
The Joint Legislative Audit Committee took more than 100 hours of testimony and subpoenaed thousands of pages of documents, including a broad request to the Governor's Office for e-mails, calendars and other records related to the deal.
The Governor's Office submitted only one calendar -- Dohn's for May 22, 2001 -- that listed two meetings relating to the deal, one with Oracle lobbyist Ravi Mehta and another with representatives of Logicon Inc., a company that brokered the deal.
Investigators believe a reference to Ellison was omitted from the information turned over to the committee, sources said.
It is unclear how the document came to be changed or how investigators learned of it, sources said.
According to a time stamp on the printout of the calendar submitted to the legislative committee, it was generated on May 3, 2002, the day after Lockyer's agents raided the Department of Information Technology and confiscated computer hard drives, servers and sacks of shredded documents.
In the legislative hearings last year, Dohn testified that she was pitched on the deal "in concept" by Mehta -- who later gave Davis computer adviser Arun Baheti a $25,000 contribution for her boss -- and other Logicon and Oracle officials.
She testified that Mehta said Davis might receive a phone call from Ellison about the deal, but to her knowledge the phone call was never placed. And she said she never told the governor about the deal, despite an e-mail from a Department of Finance official suggesting she would deliver such a briefing.
Davis has said he didn't know of the Oracle contract -- or the $25,000 contribution from Oracle his campaign committee reported a week after it was signed -- until months later.
And the Democratic governor has said he never spoke to Ellison about the contract, having met him only once -- in December 2000.
Florez said he hoped the grand jury would get further than his committee did last year.
"The whole issue of doctored documents, the calendar, Larry Ellison, I mean all that was stuff we asked during the hearing and it's something we obviously would like the grand jury to investigate further," he said. "That is an open question in this investigation, and that is: 'Was Kari Dohn as forthright as she could've been?' I don't think anybody was impressed with her. Her testimony was so sketchy, so vague. I don't think many people believed it. Period."